Negotiations continue in Doha on Friday with a view to reaching a truce in the Gaza Strip, at a time when a bloody attack perpetrated by Jewish settlers in the West Bank has aroused general condemnation, including that of Israeli leaders.
The attack by a group of Jewish settlers on the Palestinian village of Jit, which left one person dead and another seriously injured on Thursday, was condemned by the United States and many Israeli leaders, with President Isaac Herzog going so far as to denounce a “pogrom.”
“I strongly condemn tonight’s pogrom in Samaria,” Herzog wrote in a message on X, using the name of the biblical province that corresponds to the northern West Bank. The White House, for its part, denounced the attacks as “unacceptable.”
According to the Israeli army, dozens of Israeli civilians stormed into Jit, located between Nablus and Qalqilya, around 8:00 p.m. local time, setting fire to buildings and vehicles and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Soldiers and border guards “evacuated Israeli civilians from the city” and handed over one of them to police, a military spokesman told AFP.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, one man died “under settler bullets” and another was injured by a bullet to the chest.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “takes seriously the riots that took place this evening in the village of Jit,” his office said in a statement, assuring that “those responsible for any criminal acts will be arrested and prosecuted.”
Leader of Likud, the major party of the Israeli right, Mr. Netanyahu has governed since December 2022 with the support of far-right parties, advocating the extension of Israeli colonization in the West Bank and even the pure and simple annexation of this Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967.
“Tonight’s rioters in Jit have nothing to do with colonization and settlers,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the great architect of the expansion of Jewish colonization in the West Bank observed since the end of 2022, and especially since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, said on X.
“Criminals”
“These are criminals who must be dealt with by the authorities responsible for maintaining public order and with all the severity of the law,” he added.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also “strongly condemned” the attack.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, violence has flared up in the West Bank.
At least 633 Palestinians have been killed there by the Israeli army or settlers, according to an AFP count based on official Palestinian data, and at least 18 Israelis, including soldiers, in Palestinian attacks or during army operations in the Palestinian autonomous zone, according to official Israeli data.
Israeli colonization in the West Bank is regularly denounced as a violation of international law by the UN, which sees it as one of the major obstacles to the establishment of a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
In Doha, the Qatari Foreign Ministry confirmed that negotiations for a truce in the Gaza Strip would continue on Friday.
The Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators “remain firmly committed to continuing their efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that would facilitate the release of the hostages and allow the entry into Gaza of the largest possible amount of humanitarian aid,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Nothing new” for Hamas
CIA Director William Burns and foreign intelligence chiefs [Mossad] and interior [Shin Beth] Israelis are present at these talks. Hamas is not participating, but on Thursday evening, one of its leaders, Osama Hamdan, told AFP that the movement had informed the mediators in Doha of its position.
If the talks are aimed at “setting a timetable for implementing what was presented and accepted by Hamas, then we will participate,” he explained. “If the mediators manage to force [Israël] to accept this, we will participate [aux discussions]. But, so far, there is nothing new.”
“Any agreement must lead to a comprehensive ceasefire, a withdrawal [israélien] complete from Gaza, [et] “The return of displaced persons,” reaffirmed a senior Hamas official, Hossam Badran, in Doha on Thursday evening.
The Doha talks are based on a plan announced on May 31 by US President Joe Biden, which provides in an initial phase a six-week truce accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for that of Palestinian prisoners.
Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will continue the war until Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, is destroyed.
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel launched an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 111 are still being held in the Palestinian territory, including 39 declared dead by the army.
In response, the Israeli army launched intense aerial bombardments and then a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip that left at least 40,005 dead, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
The United States believes a ceasefire in Gaza would prevent an attack by Iran, which has vowed to avenge the assassination, blamed on Israel, of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in Tehran.
The risk of a military escalation across the region has redoubled following the assassination of Haniyeh and that, on July 30, of Fouad Chokr, military leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, killed in an attack claimed by Israel near Beirut.